Birthday
by Dazzlious
Summary: Happy birthday Severus Snape! 3


Severus Snape poured himself a large and well-deserved glass of Ogden's Old Firewhisky, then walked over to sit in his favourite chair by the fireplace. He stared into the flames, clearing his mind of everything and slowly regulating his breathing as he allowed the hard-fought day to slip from him. A little more at ease now he took a large mouthful of the drink, almost masochistically enjoying the burn as it worked its way down his throat. He was finally alone, deep inside the bowels of the school, able to relax and drink himself into an oblivion that would allow him to forget that today was that most heinous of days, the one he had spent most of his life dreading — his birthday.

His day hadn't been improved by Potter and his little chums causing their usual mayhem in his Potions class. The arrogant boy always rubbed Snape up the wrong way without even trying and today was no exception. Usually Snape was careful not to overdo the venom in case Albus picked up on it and gave him yet another of those famous lectures which did nothing but serve to make him feel guiltier than ever about his part in past events and yet at the same time increase his dislike of the boy even more. But today was his birthday, and whilst he might have preferred it to not happen it did at least allow him the luxury of giving himself a little leeway in his treatment of those students whose very existence made his life a misery.

The idiot child Neville Longbottom had done his best to disrupt the class and Snape had felt no compunction to hold back the vitriol. This had several benefits: the further crumbling of the over-sensitive boy's fragile ego and the interference of the annoying little know-it-all, which gave Snape yet another opportunity to severely embarrass her, which in turn led to an argument with his least favourite pair of malcontents that ended with both of them landing in detention and the loss of a pleasing number of points for Gryffindor. It had the added bonus of increasing Snape's standing further in the eyes of his Slytherin students who were always more than happy to see Potter and his merry band of pals brought down a peg or two.

Snape took another sip of his drink and stared into the fire, remembering back to previous birthdays, both good and bad — although in truth there had been very few of the former. His earliest years had been spent in pain and fear and the only good thing about having a birthday was that it meant he was another year nearer to leaving Spinner's End and starting at Hogwarts. He frowned as he remembered the cold, loveless days without presents or cards, when avoiding a beating or not being shouted at was considered a good outcome.

But then he had met Lily and everything changed. His tenth birthday was the best day of his short life; instead of the fear and hatred he was so used to dealing with he was showered with presents and a chocolate birthday cake Lily made for him and decorated with the words "Happy Birthday Sev" in lurid pink icing. Even Petunia, who he knew couldn't stand him because of his growing bond with Lily, put aside her animosity for the day and the two girls threw him a birthday party with balloons and streamers and music and laughter.

Snape gave a small, wistful sigh and took another mouthful of the whisky. On that day he had experienced for the first time in his life what it was to be truly happy, and he liked it. He even went out of his way to be pleasant to Lily's sister, even though she was almost as sour as his mother, trying to make her see that he wasn't all bad. But the cordiality between them didn't last; by the time Snape and Lily went to Hogwarts twenty months later Petunia hated them both, something he knew Lily never quite managed to come to terms with.

There were only three weeks between his birthday and Lily's, and once at Hogwarts they used this as an excuse to celebrate for most of the month, sneaking off from their respective common rooms in the evenings to beg party food from the house-elves in the kitchens before wrapping up warmly and running across the school grounds to the ruins near the Forbidden Forest if the weather was clement. When it snowed they stayed inside and found hidden places to share their haul, enjoying being together as they had done almost from the first moment they met. Their twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays were spent in this way, and Snape began to believe that perhaps he wasn't the freak his father had always accused him of being after all and that he could live a happy and normal life. But then came his sixteenth birthday and everything changed.

Snape looked at his glass and realised it was almost empty. He stood up and went to retrieve the bottle, bringing it back with him to the chair. He sat down and poured another large measure, then put the bottle down by his side. It didn't matter if he got drunk tonight. He didn't have hall duty and no one would be expecting him to leave his room. It was even unlikely he would be needed by anyone from his own House. There was a possibility that Albus might join him for a drink if he remembered it was Snape's birthday, but Snape knew the Headmaster was busy. Not surprisingly, he had been quite tense ever since the break-in at Gringotts and the highly suspicious troll incident at the Halloween feast. He had been working almost constantly on arranging protection for the Philosopher's Stone, which was now housed at the castle, since then.

Snape looked back at the crackling flames, the reds and oranges among the yellow reminding him of the glint of Lily's hair, and his mind turned back to the best birthday he had ever had.

His sixteenth birthday had started pretty much as his birthdays always did, with a smile from his lovely Lily sitting opposite him at a table on the other side of the Great Hall. She gave him his card on the way to Herbology but told him he would have to wait for his present until school was finished. Intrigued, he pressed her to tell him what the present was but Lily, her beautiful green eyes shining wickedly, refused to say a word, even when he threatened to tickle her. Snape knew from her manner that it was something special and the excitement sustained him all day. Although he was impatient to discover what she had got him, he actually enjoyed classes and was able to ignore the usual brash taunts from Potter and his obnoxious friends.

Snape sighed. If he was honest, he had also been pretty pleased with himself as he had received a card from some of the more influential Slytherins in his circle, including Lucius Malfoy who had left school a few years before and with whom Snape had stayed in contact. He knew at the time that Lily wouldn't be pleased if she knew about the cards, especially the one from Lucius; they'd had several arguments since returning to school in September over Snape's friends who she felt were a bad influence on him. Of course it turned out she was right, but at the time he was so keen to be one of the in-crowd, one of the people with power, that he ignored her warnings. His friends' interest in the Dark Arts, something that had been one of his guilty passions for so many years, always ensured that he would find friendship with them rather than with the sort of people Lily wanted him to talk to. In the end those friendships ruined their relationship forever and Lily left him to strike up a romance with Potter that broke Snape's heart. But that was in their future and he was thinking about his birthday.

Another mouthful of whisky coincided with the remembrance of Lily's beautiful face, smiling mischievously when she met him outside the Library after dinner had finished, taking his hand and leading him along corridors and up numerous stairs until they reached the seventh floor. Snape swirled the alcohol around in his mouth before swallowing it. She was glowing that night, the excitement almost overwhelming her, fizzing and threatening to burst free at any moment. It was infectious and by the time they had entered the Room of Requirement, laughing and joking with each other, he just wanted to kiss her and hold her, so warm and soft in his arms. And then she _was_ in his arms, holding him just as tightly as he was holding her and they were kissing as they had done so many times before.

Once they broke apart he finally took in the room, astonished to discover that it looked just like the overgrown area of the park where he and Lily had first met and where they spent as much of their summers as they could possibly get away with. They walked hand in hand through the tall grass, heading for their favourite spot where a checked blanket was already waiting for them. They sat down on the blanket and resumed kissing almost immediately, which soon turned into the fairly innocent fumbling that became more commonplace between them as they grew older.

Snape had been desperate to make love to Lily for several months now, to do with her all the things he had heard the older students talking about, sometimes in quite graphic detail, and that he had then gone to read about in the Library. But he always held off, not wanting to coerce her into something she wasn't ready for, vaguely aware that the ubiquitous Potter was always there in the background just waiting for him to muck things up with her. But tonight it seemed that she too was ready for things to go further; soon she was removing her clothes, slowly enough that he could watch and enjoy every moment, although she didn't look at him, just concentrated on what she was doing.

He remembered how he had been enthralled, his heart beating so fast he thought it would explode. Lily was beautiful and soft and had such interesting curves that, as she disrobed, were becoming more interesting all the time. He had expected her to stop, but more clothes came off, and then when she was completely naked she looked up at him, her cheeks flushed although he couldn't work out whether it was from embarrassment or arousal, or maybe even both. She was completely perfect and so heart-stoppingly beautiful that for a moment he was frozen in place, unable to do or say anything.

Lily moved towards him, back into his open arms, and wrapped herself around him as she whispered in his ear that she was his, that she was giving herself to him for his birthday. Snape's heart soared as he held her tightly, unable to believe what she was telling him. This was something from his wildest fantasies not real life . . . not his life, at least. But amazingly it seemed she was serious because her hand took one of his and placed it on her breast as her lips searched for his again in a deeply sensual kiss. He was almost holding his breath as he tentatively explored her body, worried that one false step would undo everything that was between them. But for that evening he could do no wrong and as the touches became ever more intimate his confidence grew. Before long he too was naked and Lily was touching him in return, doing things he had dreamed of so many times but never had any real expectation of actually happening between them.

It was then, in the midst of his heightened arousal and with his confidence soaring, that he asked something of Lily, who was already offering him so much; something he would never have dared to ask had she not been the instigator of their lovemaking and so verbal in her assertion of her love for him. He was extremely careful in the way he couched the request, playing on Lily's emotions and making it clear that this would cement their love still further but carefully not mentioning how or where the idea had come to him. If she knew that what he was suggesting was the result of research he had done because of Lord Voldemort not only would she never agree but any chance of further romance between them would probably be gone for good. She had no need to know that Dark Magic was playing any part in this. But as if he had taken a draft of Felix Felicis, Lily was open to what he was saying, so desperate to show her love for him that whilst the idea scared her a little she was willing to listen to Snape's explanation, and nervous but excited by the proposition, she agreed.

Snape was excited, too, and so it was that during the first intercourse either of them had ever experienced he used his wand to bind Lily to him forever. He remembered her cries, high and sweet, full of joy and still proclaiming her love for him. There was pain, too, when he marked her, when his wand touched the inside of her thigh, but caught up as it was in the orgasm she was experiencing it was more than bearable. And then they were lying together, still wrapped in each other's arms.

Afterwards she asked him what the mark had said since it had been branded like a tattoo into her soft pale skin but disappeared almost immediately, leaving nothing to show for that sharp stab of pain that had coincided exactly with the moment of her climax. Snape told her that it said that she was his property and Lily smiled, gazing at him adoringly before pulling him into another kiss which led to more sexual activity. He didn't tell her that the actual words were "property of the Half Blood Prince," a name he had begun using once his association with Voldemort's followers had become more entrenched. That was a secret name — a name of power — and he shared it with no one, not even his girlfriend.

Once again Snape's mind returned to the present with the smallest and quietest of sighs, feeling the lust in his hand, the memories of Lily fleeing as he looked down at the proof of his undying love for the gorgeous redhead. He gave a small, wry smile as he put down his glass and used the now-free hand to pull his wand from his jacket pocket, waving it to dismiss the evidence.

Now unsoiled once more, he again picked up the bottle of Firewhisky and refilled his glass. He took another large sip. The alcohol was definitely dulling his senses now, although not quite enough — not just yet. He gave a louder sigh as he returned to thinking about his sixteenth year. It had been the best birthday of his life, but evidently it wasn't quite as perfect as he had thought. Before the school year was over Lily had left him, refusing to accept his apologies after an embarrassing incident with his nemesis Potter and his pathetic cronies that had seen Snape calling her a Mudblood before he could manage to stop himself. To this day he still had no idea why he had done it. He had never considered Lily inferior to him, had never really considered anyone to be inferior except for that hated group who called themselves the Marauders; those boys who had made his entire time at school — and, he realised afterwards, his whole relationship with Lily — a complete misery. But in his anger and his shame he had lashed out at the one good thing in his life, and in that moment he lost her forever.

At first he was unable to understand how it could have happened. She was his property. He had marked her and that should have bound her to him forever, just as he was bound to her. (She had requested that he submit to the bonding mark on her birthday, and he was more than happy to offer himself to her completely and explained what she needed to do to make it happen.) But something had gone wrong; whilst Lily successfully bound him to her, the same hadn't happened the other way. It was such a tiny thing that he didn't even think about it at the time, but it turned out to be so crucial that it had ruined the rest of his life. He had been so concerned about ensuring that he performed the spell correctly and seeing the mark that appeared on her skin that he forgot about his own climax. He came a fraction of a second too late, once the spell was already underway, and it was enough to stop the bond that should have tied them together for all eternity from working correctly.

Which was why, ten years after Lily's death, he was still just as much in love with the beautiful woman as he was when he was sixteen and life had seemed to hold so much promise for him. There was no mistake during his marking. Their climaxes were simultaneous, and with the spell she cast at that moment, causing both pain and pleasure like Snape had never before experienced to course through his entire body, Lily unknowingly sentenced him to a life of anguish that he could never undo. He'd had no choice but to watch as the love of his life dumped him for his greatest enemy and went on to marry him and have a child. She had died, but even that didn't free him. His spell was forever, and that was what he was now sentenced to suffer. Whatever happened in the future, no one would ever be able to take Lily's place in his life. He was always going to love her, no matter how far she had gone from him.

He swirled the remaining whisky in his glass as he looked once again towards the fire, a smile slowly crossing his face. It hadn't all gone Potter's way, though. Although the bonding part of Lily's spell had backfired, the rest of it had worked like a charm. Snape knew that whilst Lily may have been in love with the arrogant Gryffindor on a general level she had never completely got over him, especially when she was in bed. Part of the spell had ensured that neither of them could ever find true happiness sexually with another partner and this was the one thing that had sustained Snape through the years following her loss. Sex with Potter could never match what she'd had with Snape, and through a tricky little addition he had worked in to be on the safe side he knew for certain that when the couple did make love, it was him Lily was thinking of as they did it, not Potter. Physically she may have been with her husband, but in her mind Snape was still her lover. Had Lily lived he would have eventually lured her back, of that he had no doubt; but her death had left him bereft and unable to even consider a relationship with anyone else, even if it had been possible.

He sighed once again. Seven decent birthdays out of the thirty-two he'd lived through, that was all he had managed to accrue. But at least they had been spent with Lily, and he had got more pleasure from those few days than many people got in a lifetime. He frowned as he looked at a disturbance in the fire which pulled him once again into the here and now, Lily receding back into the depths of his mind. Albus' head appeared in the flames; having established that Snape was there, the rest of his body followed. His blue eyes twinkled and there was a bright smile on his face as he greeted his friend with a birthday salutation. Snape picked up the bottle and waved it, waiting for a moment whilst Albus went to get himself a glass. Snape unscrewed the cap and topped up his own glass, then poured a measure for the Headmaster.

Albus sat down in the other armchair and sat back easily not needing to speak for the moment. He knew Severus would be just as happy on his own and didn't need his company but he always made the effort to come and spend some time with the taciturn Potions Master on his birthday. He knew Severus didn't enjoy his birthdays and even tried to forget they were happening, but Albus was also aware they were the time when he thought most of Lily and he didn't like to leave his friend alone with those thoughts for too long. Eventually they would talk, they always did, and Severus would be able to cast off, for a few hours at least, the dark cloak of guilt that had surrounded him ever since he had unwittingly betrayed Lily to Voldemort. In turn, Albus would assuage his own guilt at the difficult things he asked Severus to do, things that would only get harder if what he suspected about Voldemort was true. He took a sip of his drink and joined Snape in watching the flames, and each was soon engrossed once more in his own thoughts.


End file.
